With the separation of the original China Telecom Group into North and South regions, the new China Telecom and China Netcom Group were established, and the backbone network of the Internet was also divided into two parts, with China Netcom in the north and China Telecom in the south. This has led to ongoing connectivity issues between China Telecom and China Netcom. Smart DNS resolution is a DNS solution designed to address the connectivity issues between China Telecom and China Netcom.

In general, if a website has low traffic, we rarely need to use smart DNS resolution. However, I believe it is still necessary to introduce it. Currently, two major DNS service providers in China, DNSPod and Alibaba Cloud DNS resolution, support free smart DNS resolution services.

The main function of smart DNS resolution is to allow China Telecom users to resolve to China Telecom's network and China Netcom users to resolve to China Netcom's network, thereby solving the connectivity issues. However, in general, our websites are only resolved to one IP address (unless certain IPs have BGP effects), so some users have reported slow website loading.

一、Using DNSPod

1) First, register a DNSPod account at DNSPod.

2) After successful registration, add your domain in the control panel. In this demonstration, we will use "yige.win".

3) After adding the domain, it is not yet complete. You need to modify the DNS to DNSPod's DNS servers at your domain registrar. The DNS servers are:

• f1g1ns1.dnspod.net
• f1g1ns2.dnspod.net For example, if my domain "yige.win" is registered with West.cn, then I will modify the DNS servers at West.cn. Please note that different registrars may have different locations for modifying DNS servers. You can contact your domain registrar for specific instructions.

4) After saving, wait for DNSPod to take effect, and then you can manage domain resolution in DNSPod.

二、Using Alibaba Cloud DNS resolution

If your domain is registered with Alibaba Cloud, then by default, you are using Alibaba Cloud DNS resolution and no further action is required. If your domain is not registered with Alibaba Cloud, you can follow the same process as using DNSPod, as mentioned above.

In summary, after registering a domain, the domain registrar usually provides default DNS servers for resolution. However, some smaller DNS service providers may be unstable, have slow activation times, or experience resolution failures. If you are targeting Chinese users, I personally recommend using DNSPod or Alibaba Cloud DNS resolution.

DNSPod and Alibaba Cloud DNS resolution both have free and paid versions. In most cases, the free versions meet our needs. In terms of functionality, I feel that DNSPod is more powerful, as it has been focused on DNS resolution from the beginning and offers more resolution options than Alibaba Cloud DNS resolution. Both are stable, and I have not encountered any failures with these two DNS providers.